One Way or Another
by Independent-Fics
Summary: She didn't know how long Damien Darhk had been at this game of cat and mouse but she distinctly remembered not ever agreeing to play… Part of my The Time For Forgiveness (And Other Arrow Season 4 Works) collection.


Stop! And look, feast your eyes upon the once in a lifetime view of a one shot I wrote before it gets lost into the recesses of the internet...

Well I guess you could like search it up too or find it on or AO3 under my name there too and all.

But the point is I've been so busy with what the torturers of the world call school (and also other future writing endeavors including MTNFS if anyone Is reading that I've hit a snag but I do plan to finish it I don't want to leave it as is… especially with that last chapter) .

But I did write this inspired by thelockpickingvictorian's and laurabelle2930's one shots both based off of the Arrow 4x09 trailer and I am here to contribute my own! Also based off a theory I had on tumblr.

Some spoilers. Ish. (from the 4x09 trailer)

Hope you enjoy. Or not. There's angst. So yeah.

(kinda sorta edited but I found a mistake while posting this so...)

* * *

Felicity woke up groggy, a storm raging behind her eyelids, and she mused that she hadn't woken up like this in a long time.

Of course usually if she did wake up like how she was feeling now it was probably after a hangover or it was because the villain of the week had the audacity to come and kidnap her.

Usually it was the latter nowadays.

But then Felicity gave a small gasp of shock and struggled to sit up as she remembered it was because of the villain of the week. Or the villain of the past few months? She didn't know how long Damien Darhk had been at this game of cat and mouse but she distinctly remembered not ever agreeing to play…

She struggled for a few minutes, pulling her body up into a sitting position while adjusting her glasses and squinting against the harsh glare of the over head lights. She remembered Darhk coming that morning to the campaign offices and pretty much threatening them all and throwing Oliver through an office window.

Of course he had to be taken to the hospital but was stubborn and wanted to be out on the streets as soon as possible and checked himself out early. Diggle pushed for extra security detail, even though Oliver thought it was a bad idea, but John won out.

Not that it did any good as their limo and whatever security team was following them back to the offices had been attacked.

Right as Oliver was going to tell her something important too.

Of course the bad luck didn't stop there, no why would it? Instead Damien Darhk wanted to make good on his promise of hurting Oliver and had forced Oliver to watch as she and Diggle were forced into an airtight chamber of death as poisoned gas was slowly filtered in.

The last look she got of Oliver before she died was one of pure heartbreak. She never ever wanted to see that much agony and failure in his eyes.

But wait.

This couldn't be heaven right? She was pretty sure she deserved to go to heaven she had done good things in her lifetime. Right? Heaven deserving things she's sure. The pot brownie and what she might have done in that lapse of judgment only happened once.

But she guessed she could accept that this was heaven. She just didn't expect it to be so… Grey.

And she certainly didn't expect to see Damien Darhk here. Ever.

"Oh surely my dear you haven't forgotten your own father? I haven't aged that much" He emerged from the shadows of the concrete walls as Felicity stumbled to her feet, up from the mattress resting in the corner. Darhk smiled a secretive smile, but it was one full of malice at his own dark humor.

And if Felicity was in her regular state of mind she would have laughed at her punny thoughts.

"What are you talking about? Why am I here?"

"Oh come now my child. I've been waiting a long time to see you again, and I finally am ready to do so, in person no less - not going around the city with my ghosts tracking your movements - but I find you're with Oliver Queen? Now I couldn't let that stand but you think I would kill you? No, no I merely faked your death, injected you with an immunity while you were passed out from the crash."

Felicity felt the beginnings of a panic attack at that thought because so what she got an immunity, but what of her team? Oliver, she remembered,was outside the glass pounding on it till his knuckles bled as he saw that she was leaving him and all his comforting and calm flew out the window in his desperation to just get them out.

To get her out.

But before she could ponder any longer her thoughts were interrupted.

Again.

Unfortunately by a voice she was really wishing she had imagined.

"But never mind that," Darhk continued, "how does it feel to see your dear, old dad again after all these years?"

"Fantastic," she muttered wondering how her situation could get any worse than some psycho claiming to be her deadbeat dad while her friends and family could be as good as dead.

But, nevertheless, he gave her a serpent's smile, looking as if he had won the lottery, as if everything had fallen in to place. But Felicity was going to make sure that he didn't think that way for long. Because she would defy him at every turn. Because he could kidnap her, fake her death, and hold her hostage but this man would never call himself her father. That monster died decades ago, the second he left in the dead of night.

But still that smile sparked something and she started to compare the man standing before her to the man she knew over 2 decades ago.

Then her father did smile secretive smiles but his eyes were always bright and full of mischief, not full of thoughts of manipulation and murder.

And then, the father she knew had brown hair, the color of dirt that she despised after his desertion causing her to dye it black, then become comfortable in her regular blonde.

But dirt or not she much preferred it over the platinum, nearly white, hair of the monster that had welcomed her when she had awoken.

And she also preferred the smile lines her father once had when she was young that went with the shine in his eyes. Not the cold, stiff, calculating face of the now Damien Darhk, with the only gleam in his eyes being of the reflection of the fluorescent lights high above them, the rest of the pupils dark and stormy with hidden anger and inner rage at what she did not know.

But she had no doubt, trapped with the man she once called father, now unfamiliar to her, she would find out. And she would get out and take him down her true family by her side.

One way or another.

But she also didn't doubt that if Oliver was out there, her team, her true family, was out there they would find her too.

One way or another.

But when they came to her, whenever they did because she knew they would, what they would find is what scared her the most.


End file.
